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Mandatory cat licenses in Wichita? The animal control board just recommended it

Wichita pet owners might soon be required to license their cats as well as their dogs with the city every year.

Mandatory licensing and microchipping are part of a 14-point plan recommended by the Animal Control Advisory Board earlier this month.

“If we can get you to microchip your cat, we can not only get it back to you but we can know that it’s been vaccinated,” board President Mike Marlett said. “It’s just safer for your cat. It’s safer for everyone else.”

The issue of cat licensing in Wichita “has been controversial for a long, long time,” as City Manager Robert Layton put it. City leaders rejected cat licensing proposals in 1977 and 1982. In interviews with The Eagle, Wichita cat owners expressed a wide range of opinions on the issue.

Wichita now requires only that cats be vaccinated against rabies. An advisory board study found that many cities of similar size require cats to be licensed as well.

None of the proposed licensing changes — which include raising the number of cats and dogs that people can legally own in the city from two each to three and creating an online portal for license registration — can go into effect without City Council approval.

The city charges between $15 and $46 for a one-year dog license. Owners get an $18 deduction if their dog is spayed or neutered, a $10 deduction if they have a fenced backyard and a $3 deduction if the animal is microchipped.

Cat licenses should start as low as $5 for animals that are fixed, the advisory board recommends.

“Requiring some of these things of cat owners — we’re afraid it’s going to hurt some of our adoption numbers,” said Kansas Humane Society President Aaron Walker.

“The advisory board talked about the license only costing $5. That is great in and of itself, but the actual cost to get a license and to pay for those vaccinations, depending on where you go, can be much, much higher — $75 or more.”

Walker said he also worries about the impact licensing could have on community cat programs that focus primarily on getting stray cats spayed and neutered.

“The Humane Society is not opposed to the idea that animals need to be appropriately vaccinated, but if it’s a community cat, who is going to pay for some of those vaccinations?” Walker said.

“If there’s no owner to be held responsible, there’s no owner to be held responsible,” Marlett said. “This doesn’t change any of that. If you’re out there taking care of random community cats then you’re out there taking care of random community cats.”

Lagging licensing for pets

The city’s pet licensing program has suffered from both a lack of buy-in and a lack of enforcement.

The city has collected more than $5.5 million through dog licensing in the last decade, but revenues declined every year from $733,336 in 2013 to $361,600 in 2022, when Wichita issued 18,824 licenses to dog owners.

“With significant declines in dog licenses since 2010, it would make sense to start there and fix those issues before we create new ones by adding cats to the mix,” said District 5 City Council member Bryan Frye, who attended the advisory board meeting. Frye, who is running for mayor, said it’s too early for him to form a strong opinion about whether cats should be licensed.

Pet owners aren’t the only ones whose participation in licensing has lagged. Some veterinarians still help by filing license applications and renewals for dog owners who bring pets in for vaccinations, but many other vets have stopped doing that.

Fines for failure to license range from $5 to $50 but Marlett likened the violation to jaywalking.

“If they catch you doing it, it’s because you did it right in front of them,” he said.

Layton said fines for failure to license animals used to be much steeper but that strict enforcement has its pitfalls.

“We could go in with a hefty fine, but then I’m afraid I’d just have more animals in the animal shelter that don’t get claimed,” he said.

The Wichita Animal Shelter remains at full capacity and the Kansas Humane Society says its intake of homeless pets is at a 10-year high. Marlett said cat licensing and mandatory microchipping would ensure more escaped pets are returned to their owners.

There’s no way to know for sure how many of the cats in the animal shelter are pets, but Marlett estimated that as much as 95% of felines that wind up there are feral. He said just 2% of cats at the shelter are returned to owners.

Animal control is run as a division of the Wichita Police Department. Layton said he expects to sit down with police officials in the coming week to discuss the recommendations, which will likely be reviewed by district advisory boards before the City Council votes on any proposals.

“I don’t know. I think it’s kind of silly,” said Megan Gardner, a Wichita cat owner who already has a dog licensed with the city. “I don’t know if [licensing is] going to help the cat problem.”

“I think the cats should be microchipped,” another cat owner, Jesse Hancock, told The Eagle. “I mean, if that was part of it then I think I would be for it.”

Hancock, whose own cats are already microchipped, said a $5 fee wouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

“It costs a lot to take care of the cats already. I don’t think that I need any additional costs in licensing them,” said Julia A., who didn’t want to give her last name. “I think it’s them trying to get information, more personal information about us that they don’t need to have.

“The microchipping — I personally don’t feel OK with that,” she said. “For me, it’s kind of a religious thing.”

All cats and dogs that KHS puts up for adoption are microchipped.

What do other cities do?

All six cities that an advisory board subcommittee looked at when studying pet licensing required cats to be licensed.

Arlington, Texas; Aurora, Colorado; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Omaha, Nebraska; Tampa, Florida; and Tulsa, Oklahoma charge between $5 and $80 a year for mandatory cat licenses.

Other cities with comparable population sizes, including Oakland and New Orleans, do not require cats to be licensed.

“I don’t know that trying to fund our way through it, you know, in terms of more licensing and more licensing revenue is the right approach,” Layton said.

Wichita’s pet licensing revenue goes to the general fund and makes up only a fraction of the city’s animal control budget, which is $2.8 million this year.

Fines for failure to license pets in Wichita’s peer cities range from $100-$500 in Tampa to up to $2,650 in Aurora, where violators may also face up to a year in jail. Jail time is also a possible penalty in Omaha and Tulsa.

All of the cities in the advisory board study except Tampa have online licensing options. Wichita allows residents to renew pet licenses online but the initial registration must be completed either in-person at City Hall or through a veterinarian.

Marlett said one way or another, Wichita will have to find a way to improve buy-in for pet licensing.

He said other recommendations in the plan are intended to ease the burden on pet owners, including the elimination of the $10 licensing fee for dog owners who don’t have a fenced-in yard.

“We just thought that was punitive to people who live in apartments for no particular reason,” Marlett said.

The board also wants to make licenses more visually appealing, start a coupon rewards program as an incentive for licensing pets, and add a dedicated employee to administer the licensing program.

The Eagle reached out to Mayor Brandon Whipple and all six City Council members to ask about cat licensing. Only Frye responded.